We have only to remember these facts, we say, to prove beyond all shadow of doubt that this continued to be the doctrinal teaching of the Church of England after the Restoration. Moreover, Blunt tells us that, "although there were supposed to be about 300,000 persons in England who had been baptized by Laymen at the time when the clergy were restored to their duties in 1661, no public provision was made by the Church for rebaptizing them, nor does it appear. that any doubt whatever was thrown upon the validity of their baptisms by those who revised our Offices." (Annot., Bk. Com. Pr., p. 405.) Finally, if there should still remain any doubt as to the teaching of the Church to-day, we have only to remind our readers of the generally acknowledged fact that no doctrinal alterations or changes of any importance whatever, have been made either in the Prayer Book or in any of the other formularies of the Church of England since 1661, and that, with regard to the very matter in question, the legitimacy of Lay Baptism has twice been officially affirmed within the past one hundred years. "The validity of Lay Baptism during the present century has been twice decided by the ecclesiastical courts of the English Church-in the Court of Arches in the case of Kemp v. Wickes (A.D. 1809), and in that of Martin v. Escott in the Arches Court and before the Judicial Committee (A.D. 1841). (Blunt's Dict. of Doct. and Hist. Theology, Art., Lay Baptism.) Add to this the official declaration of our own Communion that "this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship" (Preface to Prayer Book), and the well known fact that in actual practice we are accustomed to recognize the validity of Lay Baptism, to say nothing of the validity of the Baptisms performed by Protestant Ministers, and it will be easily seen that our contention is fully established. But, whatever may be our attitude toward the Ministers of other Protestant Churches, once admit that this Church recognizes the validity even of Lay Baptism, and officially recognizes again that all who are validly baptized are incorporated into the Body of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, and it follows inevitably that this Church officially recognizes all Protestants as members of the Catholic Church. Hence, it is contrary to the official teaching both of the Church of England and of our own to affirm that the Holy Catholic Church is limited to those Congregations which are under the regimen of the Historic Episcopate, or that all non-episcopal, protestant bodies are excluded therefrom. |